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The Ekklesia Project Newsletter October 2006
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in this issue
-- Ekklesia Project Finances
-- Ekklesia People
-- Initiative Update: Speakers Bureau

Greetings!

This newsletter is an effort to begin monthly electronic newsletters from The Ekklesia Project. Our new editor is John McFadden, longtime EP endorser and coauthor of three of our pamphlets. What isn’t entirely new is some of the content in this issue: it was prepared last April, but because of electronic glitches it didn’t get to you.

Ekklesia Project Finances
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 This report was written in April 2006. A current financial report will be included in the November newsletter. With the first quarter of the year behind us, we can report the following:
Contributions: $2,591
Initiative expenses $8,298

Included in that expense line is $1795 in printing costs for our last pamphlet of 2005, Just War as Christian Discipleship. Our other 2005 pamphlet was Christian Funeral Practices in a Changed Time and Culture. All Ekklesia Pamphlets are available online here. If you wish to make a contribution to the ongoing work of the EP, please make checks payable to The Ekklesia Project and send to:
The Ekklesia Project
5230 N. Christiana Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625

Ekklesia People
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 Beth Newman and Todd Edmondson will be writing “Ekklesia People.” In each newsletter, they will offer brief introductions to some of our newest endorsers, and some of our long standing friends.

Joe Sellepack, a recent endorser of The Ekklesia Project, is a pastor in Orchard Park, NY, where he has lived for six years. In his ministry, he desires to connect his congregational community to the larger Church. Upon reading about EP in Christian Century (2005), he set out to learn more, and quickly discovered EP to be the sort of community he was hoping to find. Joe looks forward to continued involvement with EP, as both he and his Church community grow in discipleship.

Like many endorsers, Jeff Rogers’ wrestling with questions of faithful discipleship has led him to find in The Ekklesia Project a group of “mutually minded followers.” Having studied philosophy at Western Kentucky University and religion at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, Jeff was compelled to revisit the work and thought of John Howard Yoder in the wake of September 11th, 2001. In 2004, Jeff and his wife served in the Dominican Republic where Jeff continued to seek out models of radical discipleship, and to explore these ideas with a group of friends after his return to the United States. This journey of reading, discussion, and reflection eventually led him to The Ekklesia Project. He has endorsed EP in the hopes that it will continue to be a context in which he can build relationships and be challenged by fellow disciples of Jesus Christ.

Beth Newman has enjoyed the support and challenge of The Ekklesia Project since its beginnings. She is particularly drawn to EP’s focus on radical discipleship and the unity of the Body of Christ. Having taught theology and ethics for twelve years at Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN), she is now a professor at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. She lives in Virginia with her husband, Jon, and their two children, Jessica (8) and Jacob (5). She has recently written on the practice of hospitality and her book, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers will be out in Spring, 2007 (Brazos).


Initiative Update: Speakers Bureau
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 Though EP has had a Speakers Bureau for about two years, that fact has been concealed beneath the name "Ekklesia Institute." We are now returning to the more explicit name Speakers Bureau. The purpose of the SB remains the same: "to bring people into conversation to share ideas and foster practices for the renewal of the Body of Christ." We try to do that by connecting speaking opportunities with quality speakers.

In 2005, the SB connected Allyne Smith with Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, where he spent six weeks as scholar in residence. Tobias Winright spoke in Indianapolis at the invitation of the Plowshares Peace Studies Collaborative of Goshen, Earlham, and Manchester Colleges. If you would like to find an EP speaker, please contact SB directors Barry Harvey and Laceye Warner.

Speakers Bureau Webpage



Contact Information
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phone: 773-428-5745
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